Adobe After Effects Introduction/Intermediate — A 2-day course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Synopsis

In this Adobe After Effects training course, students new to After Effects CS4 will learn to create motion graphics and visual effects. It is packed with hands-on exercises so that students can learn by doing. Bring your vision to life with blockbuster visual effects and compelling motion graphics in Adobe After Effects Professional software.

Course Objectives

Once delegates have completed this course, they will be able to:

• Get familiar with the After Effects CS4 interface
• Learn to create animations
• Learn to work with layers
• Learn to apply effects
• Learn to work with masks and mattes
• Learn about type
• Learn to use color effectively
• Learn to export files
• Work with advanced compositions
• Automate their workflow

Suitable for

• This course is for people new to After Effects
• A person who wishes to work in the video field or who currently works in the field, or an Adobe application user looking to expand his or her skills, looking to add effects to video projects. Some students may be mainly interested in creating video primarily for the Web, and others for film, but the majority are preparing more for work in broadcast video.

Course Prerequisites

• Before taking this course, you should have a basic understanding of your computer’s operating you should know how to launch an application, create and save files, and copy files from CD and other media.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Course Contents

After Effects User Interface and Animation

• What is a project file and what is in it?
• Tools and Panels: how to navigate around the application
• Workspaces: selecting, saving, setting

Basic Animation

• Transform properties of layers
• Keyframing: making element move
• Importing Photoshop and Illustrator files

Intermediate Animation

• In depth keyframe manipulation and interpolation
• Graph Editor
• Motion Sketch/Smoother
• Auto-Orient/Motion Blur
• Roving Keyframes
• Anchor Point/Pan Behind Tool
• Panning a large graphic: technique
• Hold Keyframes

Layer Control

• Trim-move-stack-split (keyboard shortcuts)
• Quality
• Slip Tool
• Sequence Layers
• Solo Switches
• Looping Footage
• Image Sequences
• Frame Rate vs. Time Stretch
• Blending Modes
• Effects and Solids with Blending Modes
• Effects and Presets Panel: animation presets
• Adjustment layers

Transparency

• Masks
  • Shape, feather, expansion
  • Masking with the Pen Tool: Bezier curves
  • Mask Shape Interpolation
  • Mask modes
• Mattes and Stencils
• Mask shapes

Type and Titles

• Simple Rules of Titling
• Basic Text
• Text Animators/Range Selectors
• Randomizing
• Applying and Saving Text Animation presets
• Per character animators in CS4

Nesting

• Precomps
• Editing precomps
• Locking panels

Render Order

• How After Effects put it all together

Exporting Files

• Render Queue
• Export As
• Same Frame As
• Prerender